A federal advisory panel failed to reach a decision on whether to recommend that the American Bar Association’s accreditation arm lose federal recognition. Members deadlocked on whether to go down that route or instead recommend that the law school accreditor be subject to additional oversight for a year. 

The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity — a panel that advises the U.S. Department of Education on accreditation matters — voted 11-1 Thursday morning to report that its members couldn’t reach a recommendation. 

The day before, NACIQI split 8-8 in two separate votes on how to proceed after spendingt roughly seven hours deliberating and listening to comments from the public, Education Department staff, and the accreditor, the Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. The majority of NACIQI’s current members have been appointed by either the current administration or Republican congressional leaders.

Just a month before NACIQI’s meeting, the Education Department issued a staff report recommending ending federal recognition for the accreditation council. 

That report said the accreditation council didn’t meet over two dozen federal criteria, including requirements that it be sufficiently independent from the ABA’s professional organization and make timely changes to its standards. Staff also argued that the council didn’t take action quickly enough to suspend its diversity standard following the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down race-conscious admissions. 

The fate of ABA’s accreditation council has broader implications for the higher education sector. It stands at the nexus of the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul the traditional accreditation system and its attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. 

In an executive order last year, President Donald Trump directed the U.S. education secretary to examine whether to end the ABA council’s federal recognition while lambasting its now-repealed diversity standard. 

Daniel Thies, the past chair of the ABA’s accreditation council, defended the organization Wednesday, arguing that the agency was compliant with federal regulations and raising concerns with political influence over the review process, including Trump’s executive order. 

“That executive order reinforces our concerns about the process to date and suggests that the outcome may be preordained,” Thies said. 

Under Secretary Nicholas Kent will now have 90 days to make a final determination on whether to deny the ABA council federal recognition. If Kent decides to end the council’s recognition, the accrediting agency can then appeal that decision to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon. The council could also seek legal action if it lost federal recognition.

Losing federal recognition would mean the ABA could no longer act as a gatekeeper to federal student aid. However, while the ABA council accredits nearly 200 colleges, a council representative said Wednesday that only five of those institutions rely on accreditation from the agency to access federal student aid. 

Even if the council lost federal recognition, it could still continue accrediting law schools so their graduates meet state requirements for licensure. Typically, a board of the state’s highest courts set these standards, which often require those sitting for the bar exam to have graduated from an ABA-accredited law school. 

Yet Thies and others still raised concerns about disruptions to the legal profession. During public testimony, Frederick Thrasher, deputy director of the National Association for Law Placement, said the loss of recognition could create shifts in licensure rules and affect whether lawyers can practice in different states. 

“Although the department's decision does not control those state decisions, federal recognition provides an important foundation for state courts' reliance on the council,” Thrasher said. “Without it, some courts may adopt different accreditors or educational requirements, fracturing the national system and creating inconsistent bar eligibility rules.”

Concerns about the accreditation council’s independence

Much of Wednesday’s meeting focused on whether the ABA’s accreditation council was sufficiently independent from its professional organization. 

Under the accreditation council’s policies, it sends proposals to change its standards to the ABA’s House of Delegates. The House of Delegates can vote against those changes and send them back to the council for reconsideration. 

However, the ABA’s accreditation council can move forward with its desired changes anyway. That’s exactly what it did after the House of Delegates voted against the proposal to eliminate the council’s diversity standard. After that vote, the council formally repealed that standard earlier this month. 

Thies pointed to that and other policy changes the council had pursued without the House of Delegate’s blessing as evidence that it is independent from the ABA’s professional organization. Recent policy changes would also limit the House of Delegates to sending back a proposal to the accreditation council to only once. 

However, some NACIQI members and public commentators raised concerns with this process. 

“There's a delay there of having to send it to them, listen to them,” Jay Greene, NACIQI’s chair and a McMahon appointee, said Thursday. “Then you could ignore them, but you have to wait for them.”

Other NACIQI members raised further concerns with the council’s ties to the ABA. They pointed to one division of the ABA — the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar — formally electing the council’s members. 

The accreditation council’s prior diversity standard also was a point of contention. 

The ABA council suspended its diversity standard in February 2025 in the wake of numerous anti-DEI orders and guidance from the Trump administration. 

But some NACIQI members voiced concerns that the council didn’t move quickly enough to change the standard following the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down race-conscious admissions. The standard required law schools to show a “commitment to diversity and inclusion” and “having a student body that is diverse with respect to gender, race, and ethnicity.”

Thies said the council initially preserved the standard following August 2023 guidance from the Biden administration sharing ways colleges could still lawfully support diversity in the wake of the court ruling. 

That “led the council to conclude, in good faith, that our standard could be applied in a manner that complied with that guidance, which we took seriously,” Thies said. When the Trump administration released guidance with a different view, the council quickly suspended the standard, Thies said. 

When questioned, Thies added the council had no plans to reinstate the diversity standard in the future.